


Feel Like I'm Fixin to Die

by codswallop



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Angst with a Happy Ending, During Canon, M/M, Pining, Pre-Series, Psychic Abilities, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-29
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-06 19:58:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12217884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/codswallop/pseuds/codswallop
Summary: Ray is slightly psychic. It's not super fun.





	1. Chapter 1

Ray never was able to pinpoint exactly what triggered the whole FUBAR mess. It might have been that time at Pendleton when he nearly electrocuted himself to death with a souped-up donkey dick, trying to get it functioning again; that was a definite candidate, but then again it might have been a bad burrito for all he knew. Or maybe it just _started_ , like the whole Middle East invasion itself--hell, maybe the invasion caused it. 

In any case, it definitely wasn't something he’d ever noticed before Afghanistan, but he couldn't say when the first time was that something unmistakably weird happened. There was a lot of little shit he put down to coincidence at first, or just the fact that he was such a boss fucking RTO (because he was) (but not that good, nobody was that good). Stuff like knowing where the next turn was in the dark even when the NVGs were all crapped out, or getting the comms synced to the right frequency just before they were notified what encryptions to use. Being able to reach for an MRE and toss it back without looking because the jalapeño cheese gave him the runs--you could call it good luck, almost. 

Only not, because it mostly fucking sucked.

*

The very first full-blown come-to-Jesus capital-victor Vision: that, he remembers. He wishes he didn't. He was driving the staff sergeant’s humvee that day, and it fucking exploded. IED, right under the passenger seat, game over--he felt the spray of blood and brains and viscera all over his right side, and slammed on the brakes hard, screaming like a girl probably.

“What the FUCK, Marine--” the staff sergeant started to say, and Ray turned to look at him, shaking, bewildered. He was whole. No blood, no shrapnel, nothing--was he dreaming or insane?

And then the explosion rocked them again, but from ten yards ahead. 

It took a long time for anyone to be able to convince Ray that the first explosion hadn't happened. He was still scrubbing obsessively at the right side of his face, trying to get nonexistent gore off it, when they casevaced him to the FOB to be treated for psychological shock and tested for Seeing ability.

*

Most of what Ray sees for a long time after that is pretty low-level shit by comparison. But there’s one near the end of his Afghanistan tour that turns out to be another doozy.

“You’re that hick radio savant, aren’t you?”

“ _Retard_ hick radio savant, motherfucker,” Ray says without looking up from what he’s doing, but he’s got about half a dozen wires in his mouth, so it might not be exactly audible. He spits a few of them out. “Get it straight. Who the fuck wants to know, anyway?” He squints up--the sun is blinding, and he can only see the outline of the tall Marine standing over him, haloed in the haze.

“Sergeant Colbert, Bravo, Second Platoon.” The voice is more mocking than reprimanding, but Ray spits out the rest of the wires and hops up to tuck in his shirt, just in case.

“I’m not here to pull rank,” Colbert tells him. “Go about your business, Marine. You asked, that’s all. I was just curious to meet this wonder-boy of Charlie Company I’ve been hearing about. My own RTO claims he can’t keep our comms up for shit ’cause the transceivers are all built out of off-brand Japanese factory rejects from the early eighties, but it sounds like you’re managing. Want to come over and give him some pointers?”

“Fuck, no,” Ray says. “Are you kidding me? An RTO’s relationship with his equipment is intensely personal, Sergeant. It’d be like me walking over and grabbing his junk to show him how to get in a more efficient combat jack. And you boys in Bravo know how to punch a lot harder than us mere mortals, from what I’ve heard.”

Rice, who’s been listening to the whole conversation, calls out, “Don’t even try it, Colbert. I know your thieving ways. Won’t do you any good, anyway--Person can’t teach his skills. He just uses his superpowers.”

Ray tries not to wince. Rice isn’t a bad TL--not that he’s had many to compare him to--but he’s got all the finesse and subtlety of a drunk water buffalo on steroids, and he fucking loves any chance he gets to roll out the whole superpowers bit.

“Yeah, I heard about that, too,” Colbert says, his eyes still on Ray. “I don’t believe in any of that shit, though.”

Ray isn’t sure whether to be offended or relieved. On the one hand, _fuck you_ , Mister Super-Tall Bravo Sergeant. On the other hand, he’s sworn up and down within the full hearing of the whole platoon that the next asshole to ask him to tell their fortune in his crystal ball is going to be eating batteries, and he doesn’t have a chance of taking this Colbert in a fight. 

Besides, batteries are in incredibly short supply right now.

Rice is loudly determined to defend his RTO’s and his company’s honor, though. “Oh, he's a bonafide Seer, all right--they had him over to the FOB at Rhino after he saved the staff sergeant’s life practically the minute we got out here, hooked him up to a buncha wires and shit for ten days before they turned him back to us and said he was legit. Half a percent of the population and we got one here of our very own--I was afraid they’d keep him on the base and use him like a sniffer dog, but we got to keep him for a good-luck charm.” He drops to one knee in the dirt next to Ray and tousles his head.

“Yeah, woof,” Ray says absently. He's gone back to work on his radio wires to avoid the embarrassment of looking at Colbert during Rice’s speech. The brain experts they'd flown in to Rhino had actually turned him loose with the proclamation that his Seeing abilities were _low-level, undeveloped, and too unpredictable to be of consistent use in military operations_ \--that, plus they were clearly unimpressed by Ray’s attitude. 

Colbert looks unimpressed as well, when Ray glances up again to see if he's still there. “I'm not out to steal your rabbit’s foot, Rice,” he says. “Charlie needs him a hell of a lot more than we do, I'm sure. I was just…” His eyes light on Ray again, still mildly amused. “Curious,” he finishes.

“Better’n a two-headed calf in a jar at the county fair, ain't I, Sarge?” Ray drawls, as hick as he can. “And you didn't even have to pay fi’ty cent.”

Colbert’s grin turns itself up three shades brighter, genuinely amused now. He peels himself up off the victor he's been leaning against and comes over to murmur in Ray’s ear, “I'll pay you in porn mags and Twinkies if you stop by our sector and look at our radios tonight. My RTO takes his shit at twenty-one thirty like a fucking clock.”

“What, _fresh_ porn mags? Not all covered with jizz stains and Bravo drool?” 

“Almost fresh.” Colbert claps him twice on the shoulder. “Think it over, Wonder Boy.”

And that's when it hits. 

*

The visions aren't always triggered by touch, although it's happened often enough that most of Ray’s company goes out of their way to avoid getting within arm's reach of him, while a still sizeable minority will take any excuse to throw an arm around his neck or brush up against him as if by accident, no matter how many times he's tried to tell them that it doesn't fucking work that way. Most of the visions are vague and soft-focus, anyway, nothing like that first one--sometimes he can hardly tell who they're referring to, let alone when and where. Not only that, they don't always come true: the lab coats told him they were representations of events with strong _potential_ to occur, nothing more. 

As superpowers go, it's pretty goddamn useless. Not to mention unsettling. This is the weirdest one yet, though. At least half a dozen different images hit him in a mixed-up flash, all of them intense and sharp-focus. It lasts all of four seconds, but it’s like the whole world just imploded in his brain without warning, short-circuiting his senses and stealing all the air from his lungs.

_explosion car bomb singing execution-style sun laughing severed blood grin screaming_

Ray has learned not to react visibly when a vision hits. Anyone in their right mind would freak the fuck out when a Seer stopped dead in his tracks right in front of them, clutched his head, and gasped “oh, holy shit!”--and Marines in a combat zone tend to piss themselves when you do it. (He may have done it as a fake-out once or twice--a few times, okay, but only to assholes who totally deserved it. Low-ranking assholes. He’s not suicidal.)

This one is a real test of his poker face, though. He’s still kneeling on the ground, bent over the radio he was working on, so Colbert can’t see his expression, probably, but he might have made some sound to give it away; he definitely froze up and went rigid for the few seconds it lasted. He can taste the blood, feel the scream in his own throat, and he’s almost positive Colbert was, unbelievably, sucking him off in one of the flashes but he was _fucking beheaded_ in a nearly simultaneous one so Ray’s got a really confusing semi-chub and feels like he might puke at the same time. He forces himself to un-tense, tries to shake it off.

Rice, still loitering nearby, didn’t miss it. “There you go,” he tells Colbert, smugly. “That was it--you saw something, didn’t you, Person? What’d you see?”

“Your mom,” Ray says automatically. “The sergeant here’s gonna give her about fifty orgasms, soon as he gets stateside again. He’s a real pro at fucking your mother, looks like.” It’s weak, but at least his voice isn’t quavering when he says it, he doesn’t think. And it makes Rice come back over and tackle him down into the dirt, which is a good distraction. Ray gets back up just in time to see Colbert walking away, shaking his head.

*

On his way over to Bravo’s sector of the encampment that evening, Ray still hasn't decided what he's going to say to Colbert or how--only that he has to say something. One of the images from that afternoon keeps flashing up behind his eyeballs repeatedly (not the BJ, although he’s been thinking of that one, too, with a horrified sort of flushed thrill) and it’s not going to leave him alone until he does something about it, apparently. 

When Colbert sees him approach, he lifts his eyebrows and gives Ray a small nod of welcome. “Gentlemen,” he tells his team. “The radio prodigy cometh. Fetch forth the promised Penthouses of welcome.”

Ray looks to one of the other men, a PFC oiling his weapon. “Does your TL always talk like such a fucking nerd?” he asks, in a really loud fake whisper.

“Pretty much,” the private accedes. “You get used to it.”

“Also: _Penthouse_?” He addresses Colbert directly this time. “Fuck, homes, I thought you said porn. Don't you have anything really filthy, fit for a real Marine, or do you Bravo boys always like to jack off to glorified Victoria’s Secret catalogs?”

That earns him a guffaw and a few _oh, burn_ s and a _get some, little Charlie!_ from the peanut gallery. He's not sure how Colbert’s going to take it at first--he's looking at Ray like he can't quite believe he’s for real, but then the balance tips and he starts to laugh.

“You're a piece of work, Person,” he says. “I was warned. Radios are over here, and if the lovely ladies of Penthouse are too chaste for you, I don't know what to tell you, you’ll have to head down to Delta, I guess--they’re hoarding all the animal-fucking piss-drinking skank mags for themselves.”

Great, Ray thinks, twenty minutes later, when they’re still keeping up a comfortable flow of trash talk over the attenuator cables. Now he kind of _likes_ the big blond doofus, which means it will seriously suck if and when he gets turned into hamburger splatted all over an Afghani marketplace. He gets up abruptly. “These should work now,” he says. “Child’s play, just tell your RTO to strip the cables down again and give the wires a good lick before reattaching them if they give you any more trouble. And, uh...listen, Sergeant?”

“Twinkles, yep,” Colbert says. “You earned them all right--I've got a box stashed with my snivel gear, hang on, be right back.”

Ray follows after him. “Keep your Twinkies. The thing is, this afternoon, you know, when you, when I, I saw--”

Colbert does a sudden about face and stares down at him, cold-eyed. “I told you I don't believe in that crap.”

Most sane non-idiots act this way to some extent, Ray reminds himself. Who wants to know? It's bad shit. That's not his problem, though.

“I'm gonna fucking tell you anyway, Sergeant. This part’s a guess: you've got a three-day pass coming up.”

“Anyone could have told you that.”

“Whatever, shut up, that's irrelevant. You've got a three-day pass, you were thinking of taking it in Kandahar. Don't. There, I said it, you don't believe in it, now you'll go ahead and do it just to prove it’s bullshit and that’ll fuck me up because maybe if I hadn't told you you'd’ve changed your mind--Jesus, why am I still talking here. Mission accomplished, solid copy, over and out.”

He starts to walk away. Colbert hesitates, then follows after him. “Hey,” he says. “Hold up. I don't think you're a con man, necessarily,” he offers. “You seem like a good guy. You probably actually believe what you're saying.”

“I don't even know, man.” Ray walks a little faster, because he actively wants out of this conversation now. “Maybe it is bullshit. Maybe I'm going fucking nuts from licking too many batteries. I don't care what you do, okay? I didn't even know you eight hours ago. Why did I even come over here tonight?”

“For porn and junk food,” Colbert says. “Lighten up, Tiresias.”

“Fuck you, I'm not blind.” Ray stops walking and squints back at him. “Being a chick for seven years might not be bad, though…least I’d be getting some pussy, even if it was just my own.” He widens his eyes, mocking Colbert’s expression. “Oh, look--yeah, the hick knows his Greek mythology. I’m _edumacated_ trash, mothafucka.”

“Son of a bitch.” Colbert gives him a slow easy grin, shaking his head in apparent admiration, and Ray’s stomach does a queasy roll. The dude is fucking hot, he’s apparently got some version of a future self who's not averse to sucking Ray’s dick, and all Ray can see is the version with half his pretty face shattered down to bone and meat. 

“Son of a bitch,” Ray agrees. “It was nice knowing you, Sergeant.” He salutes and then practically sprints back to Charlie territory, because enough is fucking enough of this.

*

There’s an explosion in Kandahar five days later, a car bomb. Two Marines are killed. After Ray gets over his initial heart attack when news of the incident comes through, he tells himself to chill. Charlie Company’s peeled off on a separate mission nowhere near Bravo, but he’s certain he’d have heard a lot more about it if either of the KIAs were Recon. It still sucks, obviously, but at least it doesn't suck with the weight of personal responsibility added on.

Also, the images in his head have faded--that one bad one in particular, anyway, and the others feel less urgent, for now.

He doesn't actually set eyes on Colbert again until nearly a month later, when the entire battalion is stationed in Italy for ten days’ enforced decompression time at the end of their deployment. “They don't want to inflict us on our loved ones again until we’ve had a chance to get drunk and fuck a lot of prostitutes and screw all the combat crazy out our systems,” Rice theorizes over watered-down drinks at one of the shitty Italian outpost canteens. 

“We might go home and shoot up a mall if we didn't,” Ray agrees. “I for one most definitely would. Kidding!” he adds quickly, hands up, because as a team leader Rice is some kind of mandated reporter, probably, and right now he's giving Ray a fishy look. “Sir, I would never shoot up a shopping mall, on my honor. The mall is a sacred space of consumerist worship, which must not only exist but thrive in order for our great nation to function. As a true and decent American, I would only shoot up a school.” 

Rice does an honest to God spit-take, spraying rum and cola all over the bar top. “Jesus Christ, Person, that's nothing to joke about,” he protests, as Ray reaches over the bar for more napkins. “I know you're the class fucking clown here, but come on.”

It actually was a step too far, probably--Ray’s own combat hangover is taking the form of even worse verbal diarrhea than usual, and he's about to apologize when he turns away from the bar and finds himself chest to chest with Colbert.

“I’ve been looking for you,” Colbert tells him, staring down at him all serious and about eight feet tall, and it wasn't just the vision, turns out, his eyes actually are that blue and that piercing. It's kind of ridiculous. “Can we talk somewhere? Not here.”

“Uh, yeah, I guess,” is Ray’s brilliant answer, and he lets himself be steered out of the canteen and out into the street, where it's at least marginally less packed with drunk and half-drunk Marines.

Colbert isn't one for verbal foreplay, apparently. “The car bomb,” he says, as soon as they're outside. “You saw that?”

“Kind of, yeah.” Ray doesn't want to say the exact truth, which is that he saw the aftermath of the explosion, including bits of blond sergeant all over the city square. “Were you...there? When it happened?”

“No. I went to the FOB for my three-day instead. I might not have been anywhere near it even if I had gone to Kandahar,” he adds, sounding defensive. 

“Maybe not,” Ray agrees. It's both incredibly good and incredibly weird to see Colbert just standing here, in the flesh and in one piece. He feels like he's probably staring, but it's hard to look away; his eyes keep wanting to confirm that this is the real deal. “Fuck, I'm glad you didn't go, though,” he can't help saying, grinning like a total idiot, and Colbert looks surprised at first, but then shrugs and grins back.

“Hey, one thing, though,” Ray adds. “Did you, uh, report it?”

Colbert looks blank. “No,” he says. “Report it to whom and for what purpose?”

Ray makes a face. “I'm...kind of supposed to report it, if I have any visions that actually come true,” he admits. 

“And you don't want to because…?” Colbert’s still not getting it. Big and dumb, despite the excellent grammar and syntax, Ray decides.

“Yeah, being a test case in a big government science experiment? Even less fun than they made it look like in E.T., turns out,” he says finally. “I'd rather get shot at, personally.”

“Oh.” Colbert doesn't seem to know what to say to that, and who can blame him? A seriously crude riposte would probably be the only save for this conversation, Ray thinks, but instead they're just going to stand there not looking at each other for a million years, it seems. Probably, being a good boy Bravo team leader, Colbert’s going to have to report it anyway, now that Ray’s been stupid enough to alert him to the fact that he was supposed to. At least he has the decency to look kind of sorry about it, but--

“It didn't come true, though,” Colbert says suddenly, making eye contact again. “Right? You saw me get killed in the explosion. Didn't happen. Living proof, right here, that you’re a big fucking liar fake who can't predict shit.”

Ray’s mouth is open, he can feel it. He gives a disbelieving laugh. 

“Listen, are you planning on re-upping?” Colbert asks him, looking all serious and intense again. 

“I...probably, yeah.” Ray had told himself he wasn't going to make any decisions until he'd been stateside for at least two months, but he feels like he's under a spell right now. “I mean, yeah. Probably. Yeah.”

“Good,” Colbert says. “Because I want you on my team. You're going to be my RTO, next time out. Are we square?”

Ray blinks. A lot. “Jesus H. Kristofferson, Sergeant,” he says. “I don't know. I feel like you ought to get on your knees here, a proposal like that--” He feels himself begin to blush. Colbert on his knees is something he's still not ready to think about, and yet he's spent more time than he'd care to admit thinking about it anyway. “I mean, or at least buy me dinner first. Or a drink. I’d settle for a drink.”

“I owe you more than a drink. Not at that dive I just pulled you out of, though. Come on, I know a place. Are you with me?”

 _Hook, line, and sinker,_ Ray thinks. _Fuck me sideways._ “I’ll consider it,” he says. “We’ll have to work on your taste in porn and snack food, though, Sergeant. Hey, what kind of music do you listen to, anyway?”

“You’re not gonna like it,” Colbert promises. “And you can cut the rank for now, okay? It's Brad.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Sitrep on the platoon,” Brad demands, on an afternoon when they’ve been settled into Mathilda for long enough to want to kill people out of sheer restlessness, which was probably part of Mattis’s plan all along. He’s tuning up the Humvee unnecessarily again for the billionth time, and Ray is watching and helping. Mostly watching. “Any particular...observations you'd like to share, Corporal?”

Ray shrugs. “Manimal’s wife is probably gonna fuck some other dude,” he offers. “Doggy-style. Seriously hot--I almost came in my pants when I saw it. She’s even gonna let him spank her ass while he’s doing it, and then he’ll--”

“Any _useful_ observations,” Brad clarifies. 

“Useful to me,” Ray says, miming a jack and biting his lower lip, then intercepts Brad’s look and drops it. “Nah. I told you, homes, it's all chill. I think I'm cured.”

Brad focuses on the Humvee’s alternator for a while. “I guess it's possible,” he allows eventually. “I can't believe even a useless grade-C psychic like you couldn't save your own face from getting burnt to shit.”

“See? All washed up,” Ray says cheerfully, hopping up onto the roof of the vehicle in case Brad glances up from the engine and notices that he suddenly looks guilty as hell. He'd seen the stove explosion. The only reason he'd had his face practically inside the motherfucker was that he'd been trying to figure out how to turn it off in time. His face was nothing, though--Rudy’s hands had been cooked black in the vision. “Lucky I'm so fucking handsome, right? A few scars just bring me down to the level you ordinary humans can stand to look at.”

“Yeah, you're a real Michelangelo,” Brad deadpans. “Anyway, the company’s already got one psychic.”

“And what a fine specimen he is, isn't he? Fucking Captain America. I swear to god, Brad--"

“Watch yourself,” Brad warns. “You’re now talking about a platoon captain, at an unnecessary decibel level, within auditory range of at least half a dozen of your direct superiors.”

“I love it when you talk dictionary to me,” Ray sighs, and splays himself out on the Humvee’s roof in a simulated swoon. “Fucking _more_ , sergeant. Ravish me with your vocabulary.”

Brad slams the hood shut and stands up. “I'm going to ravish you up the ass with this wrench if you don't quit fucking around,” he says, but he’s grinning like he can't help it--that's the look, Ray thinks, right there, he’s _seen_ that look, and it makes him catch his breath a little, but then he frowns and sits up again, reaching for his binocs.

“What the fuck,” he says. “Major activity at the gates. Who ordered Pizza Hut?”

*

Iraq is different than Afghanistan: less action, more traffic, and way too fucking many officers scrambling out of the woodwork and up their asses every five seconds with a new bullshit order. Plus there’s a reporter in the victor with them--Ray wonders idly if the LT had to suck Brad’s dick to get him to agree to that. Then he wonders about it less idly, more jealously. There’s been zero sign, apart from that insane vision all those months ago, that Colbert is actually of the dick-sucking persuasion, and yet if he had to suck a dick, if he were forced at gunpoint to suck a dick, you’d have to include Fick’s dick pretty high up on the list of preferred candidates, Ray guesses. Although they were talking the reverse, and if _Fick_ were the dick-sucker in this theoretical scenario...well, you’d definitely assume it would be Gunny’s, no question, but if he’d suck Gunny’s, there’s no _way_ he wouldn’t suck Brad’s...

He drives over a pothole, and Gabe gives a shout. “Eyes on the road, Person, quit daydreaming,” Brad says.

“Should he actually be driving?” the reporter wants to know. He’s not a bad guy for a commie, but he tends to be a nervous motherfucker. “I know low-level civilian Seers are allowed to keep their licenses, usually, but in a combat scenario, I mean?”

“Negligible risk, high potential benefit,” Brad tells him. “Person stopped short ahead of an IED on his first tour, got to be a big hero for five minutes. He hasn’t seen shit since then, but it’s still not a bad idea to have him in the lead vehicle--you never know.”

“It’s all a crock,” Trombley mumbles. “My aunt’s a Seer, she can actually tell you stuff sometimes. Person’s just a bullshit faker who got lucky one time.”

“I told you, James, I _saw_ it. You’re definitely going to be the one who actually kills Saddam--with a fucking bayonet even, blood spraying out everywhere--why don’t you believe me? They’re gonna make a movie about it, and one of the kids from Dawson’s Creek gets to play you--I can’t see which one, but then at the Hollywood premiere you’re gonna meet Natalie Portman, who gives you a hand job while you tell her all about how it felt to penetrate America’s number one enemy at close range with your weapon.”

“See, that’s how I know you’re making this shit up,” Trombley objects. “I’d never let Natalie Portman anywhere near my junk. That new Star Wars movie fucking sucked.”

“That-- _That’s_ how you know he’s making it up?” Reporter looks up from his frantic scribbling with a disbelieving grin.

“All right, fine, I made that part up,” Ray concedes. “He’s totally gonna kill Saddam, though. Look, now, look at the tiny light of hope in his little psycho-killer eyes when I say that, and tell me he doesn’t believe, deep down--”

“Ray,” Brad says. “I know it’s hard, but try not being an asshole for five minutes. Just five. I’ll set a timer.”

*

“You’ve got to quit baiting Trombley like that,” Brad tells him that night, while they’re digging their graves. 

“Yeah, all right, I know,” Ray agrees, because he’d actually felt sort of bad about it for a while when Brad called him out on it before. “It’s so fucking _easy,_ though.”

“All the more reason,” Brad says, and Ray wants to throw dirt in his face for being so goddamned noble and righteous all the time. “Moving on. Anything to report, Corporal?”

He digs for a while longer before deciding to say it, in a low voice in case anyone else can hear him. “Trombley’s gonna do something jacked-up involving civilians, down the road, I’m pretty sure. I don’t know when, or what.”

Brad stops digging for maybe ten seconds, then starts again. “That’s pretty fucking vague,” he says. “Is that a vision or a guess? I know you don’t like the kid.”

“Fuck, so you think I’d make shit up about him? Nice. Real nice. That’s just...Jesus, Brad. That’s what you think of me? What the fuck?”

“All right, all right, calm down. I’m just saying, it’s not much to go on. You think it’s something I ought to report to the LT?”

“No,” Ray says, eventually. It _is_ vague, and he _doesn’t_ like Trombley--he’s a bloodthirsty little cretin, and a suck-up besides. “Forget I said anything. It’s probably nothing.” He finishes off the grave and settles in.

“I’ll keep an eye out,” Brad says, settling in next to him. “He’s definitely trigger-happy. Anything else?”

“How much would you have to get paid to let Lieutenant Fick give you a blowjob?” Ray asks, because it’s dark, and they can’t see each other, and he’s pretty sure he can get away with it.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Person, your brain,” Brad sighs, but he sounds more amused than horrified. “Go to sleep.”

“Seriously, how much, though? A hundred dollars? Fifty? He’s got a really pretty mouth.”

“Fuck, a blowjob’s a blowjob, I guess,” Brad says. “I’d take one for free. Wait, _that’s_ not something you saw, is it?” he says, sitting half up in his grave suddenly.

“No! Fucking no! No way,” Ray insists, and Brad lays back down. “So you actually would, then,” he muses out loud, a minute or two later.

“No, I would not, for the benefit of anyone who might potentially overhear this insane fucking conversation,” Brad says. “Go the fuck to sleep, Corporal,” and he sounds like he means it this time, so Ray shuts up. And doesn’t go to sleep. Not for a long time.

*

The visions are actually getting fairly intense now, maybe because they’re closer to danger, maybe because there are so many possibilities for _anything_ to happen out here. They don’t come in flashes anymore, but in a steady undercurrent of dreamlike images that flow around the edges of things, and when Ray turns his head to try and look more closely at them, they vanish like the heat-mirages that make the whole country feel like it’s rippling with unsteady water most of the time. Miracles and horrors at every turn.

The shambling, ragged hajjis who come begging for surrender only to get turned away: he sees them die, and knows it’s not just a likelihood this time. He sees bodies all over the sides of the road, and some of them are real, and most of them aren’t in uniform. Some of them are _small_.

But what can you do, except let it make you crazy like it’s done to Captain America? No fucking way, Ray decides. He’s not going to let it get to him. Singing at the top of his lungs drives it out of his skull, for a while, especially if he can get Brad to join in. Talking a mile a minute about whatever bullshit pops into his head--he’s always been a pro at that, and it turns out to have its uses, even though he can tell it’s driving Colbert nuts sometimes. _I can’t stop, you don’t understand,_ Ray would tell him, if he could. He needs the noise, he needs not to be alone with his thoughts. 

Then Trombley shoots up the fucking kids, and it all gets a lot worse.

*

“It was just a guess, I swear,” he says, when Brad finally comes out from under the Humvee. “Mostly a guess. There was nothing to go on, no detail. And I told you not to report it, I told you to forget it, remember? It’s on me, if anything.”

“You're goddamn right it is,” Brad says, walking fast ahead of him. Ray’s practically jogging to keep up, and then Brad stops and turns and he nearly slams into him. “Did you see anything else? After that time when you said something?”

“About Trombley? No, I swear--”

Brad grabs him by the upper arm at that, hard. “You mean you’ve seen other shit, _not_ about Trombley, that you’ve failed to report?”

Ray just stares at him, because the answer is so clearly _yeah, all the fucking time, you big moron_ that he sort of almost thought Brad knew, but it’s apparent now that he really, really doesn’t.

“This is fucked,” Brad says, letting him go. “How do you even live with yourself?” He looks revolted and a little broken--he’s coming apart with guilt, Ray sees, and he feels like something small and hard next to him. 

“It’s a war,” Ray says, which is stupid and obvious, but Brad is clearly losing his shit over this, and he doesn’t have time to walk him through it but apparently that’s what he's going to have to do anyway. “Look. I see some stuff, okay? I don’t know why. Half of it doesn’t happen, or I’ll never know whether it did or not. The other half, maybe it does happen, but there’s _fuck-all_ I can do about it, or I maybe only saw a tiny hint of it, like with Trombley. When I see enough to actually do something about it, that’s the shit I can report.” 

Or do something about it himself without reporting it, he knows better than to say. Or try to forget about it, because it’s too insane and maybe it won’t happen anyway. Brad’s right, if he thinks about it; it’s fucked.

Brad is shaking his head, looking beat down, looking anywhere but at Ray. “I’ve got to take this to the LT,” he says. “He’s got no idea-- _I_ had no idea. I thought...I don’t know what I thought. You said it was all low-level shit--”

“It is low-level shit!” Ray insists.

“That kid’s going to _die_ ,” Brad spits at him. “That’s your definition of low-level?”

“No, that’s my definition of shit that happens during a war that you can’t always do anything about,” Ray shouts back, and then lowers his voice, because they’re not exactly in the middle of the desert all by themselves. “Think about it. If you’d gone to the LT when I told you about Trombley, what the fuck would he have done about it? Nothing, because it was a completely nonspecific report from a low-grade uncertified Seer.”

“So maybe you ought to be reassessed for upgrading,” Brad says.

Well. There it is. And if Ray felt small a minute ago, he feels like an ant now, staring up at someone with the power to crush him. 

“That shut you up,” Brad observes, actually looking at him for the first time in the entire conversation. “Is this all about Rhino? What the fuck did they do to you out there, anyway? It can't have been worse than SERE.”

“It was worse than SERE,” Ray tells him, and that's all he’s going to fucking say.

Brad stares down at him, and Ray can see him weighing it out: on the one hand, his valued RTO and--surely--friend, standing before him clenched like a fist with anger and fear. On the other hand, the weight of his own guilt and righteous Colbertitude.

He looks away, and for a moment, maybe more than a moment, Ray wishes he hadn't warned him about Kandahar.

“I’ve got to take it to the LT,” Brad says. “Come on, let’s go, I need you there, too,” and then, turning back, “That's an _order_ , Corporal.”

*

Fick, when they track him down, looks more tired than Ray’s ever seen him. He listens to Brad’s stupid, self-flagellating speech with an air of perplexed, nodding, polite incomprehension throughout.

“The blame is entirely on me, sir,” Brad says. “It was my duty to report Corporal Person’s remarks up the chain of command. I didn't bring him to you for reprimand, but to explain more clearly than I can the nature of what he’s been seeing, so that we can determine what the best possible course of action might be in the case of any future such incidents.”

“Thank you, Sergeant.” Fick nods again, looking lost in thought, or as though he might actually fall asleep with his eyes open in another minute. “I'm not sure I see what the issue is, though,” he goes on finally, and Ray allows himself to feel a rush of hope. “There were no time or place markers in your vision of the event, Corporal, is that correct?”

“That is correct, sir,” Ray says, with a glance at Brad.

“A general warning as to the potential for Lance Corporal Trombley’s lapse in judgment would not have been amiss,” Fick tells them, and it’s no wonder he looks so wrecked, Ray thinks, if he actually has to phrase everything this formally all the fucking time. “And I agree you could have used more caution in allowing him to fire at will, Sergeant, under the circumstances. However, I don't agree that it follows for a reassessment of Corporal Person’s Seeing abilities to be considered based on this event. As I understand it, this would necessitate his immediate transport to the nearest base and remove him from his position with your team for the foreseeable future, if not permanently. Is that your desired outcome, Sergeant Colbert?”

“No, sir, it is not. I have no complaints with--”

Fick raises a hand, cutting him off. “Ray,” he says. “Do you want your Seeing abilities to be formally reassessed?” 

“No, sir,” Ray says emphatically.

“Then I see no need for this conversation to go any further,” Fick concludes, and Ray is definitely, definitely forgiving him for the theoretical sucking of Brad’s cock, which he no longer wants within twenty klicks of him anyway. “In fact, I’d prefer for the nature of this discussion to remain between the three of us, if you don't mind. Corporal, dismissed. Sergeant, a word, please, just one minute.”

Ray salutes to them both, glaring knives at Brad, who he is definitely _never_ forgiving for trying to sell him down the river, and leaves them to it.

*

He dreams about Rhino that night. 

The thing about SERE was, you knew it was just training. You knew it had an end date on it, and you knew the bastards doing it to you were experts at this and that they weren't actually allowed to kill you or even fuck you up permanently--yeah, you might cry, you might puke or piss yourself a little, but you _knew_ , deep down, that it wasn't for keeps.

But the brain-fucking doctors were different. They got right inside your head, set up camp there, and the only thing you knew for sure was that they'd keep you forever if they could possibly justify it. They'd spend the rest of your life tweaking shit inside your neurons and taking notes on your reactions, only letting you out to play their games and then yanking you back and wiring you up again and again and again and again.

And they _knew_ shit about you, too, all the rotten little secrets you tried to keep even from yourself. They knew it all and used it against you, used it to try and make you do shit with your abilities that wouldn't be possible if you didn't have them. 

When he'd gone through it before, he didn't have the thing with Brad in his mind yet for them to use against him. In the dream, though, they do, and it’s...bad.

Ray wakes in the dark with a hand over his mouth, constricted on all sides by the walls of his grave. He screams against the hand, which clamps down harder, and then there’s a weight on top of him, crushing him.

“Ray, shut up,” Brad says in his ear. “Shut up, you're just having a fucking nightmare, you're fine.” 

He’s not fine, he's the opposite of fine, he's being _smothered to death._ When Brad lifts his hand cautiously off Ray’s mouth, he takes a few loud gasping breaths of cold air, which helps.

“Sorry,” Brad whispers. “You were shouting, I didn't want you to wake anyone, they might ask questions. You’re okay, right? You're okay. I'm sorry, Ray.” He rests his forehead against Ray’s, breathing with him until the ragged rhythm evens out and the shaking slows.

It feels terrifyingly good. So terrifying, in fact, that as soon as his limbs unfreeze he stiffens his entire body, gets his hands up on Brad’s shoulders, and shoves, hard. And when Brad pulls back enough, Ray is able to raise one knee and plant it in his gut.

“Get the fuck off me, Colbert,” he says, as if what he wanted wasn't clear enough from his actions.

“Roger that,” Brad says, but then hesitates, hovering over him for another minute. 

“I said get off, you massive sexual predator,” Ray hisses. “I don't want to fucking cuddle. I'm awake now. Get back in your own grave.”

“I’m going,” Brad says, but he _still_ doesn't move. “Listen, are we square?”

“Jesus fuck, you're clingy, for someone who just tried to get me transferred off his team and into the hands of the Manchurian Candidate mafia. If I say yes, will you back the fuck off?”

“We’re square,” Brad decides, and climbs off him at last.

They're fucking not, Ray thinks, but it’s helped, anyway; he can be pissed at Brad for being an idiot instead of lying awake petrified until his watch. It's restful, thinking up revenge scenarios, and eventually he's able to drift off again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: a couple of dead baby jokes here, just in the first section in case you want to scroll through.

Ray wants to stay mad forever--Jesus, what a relief it would be to quit caring what happens to Sergeant Goldenboy--but he's not made of fucking steel. It takes about one morning of Brad following him around with sorry puppy eyes and offering him Skittles and singing “Tainted Love” to him in Big Gay Al’s voice before Ray rolls over. Actually, it takes more like five minutes, but he manages to act mad for the whole morning, at least.

Brad even tries to actually apologize at one point, when he gets Ray on his own under the guise of needing to go over the new encryption protocols with him a couple of days later. He gets as far as “Look, about the other day. You know I would never have wanted to--” before Ray cuts him off.

“So I just learned this incredibly sick dead hajji baby joke from Chaffin, you want to hear it?”

“Not really, no,” Brad says. “Can I finish what I was about to say? It's kind of im--”

“How do you get twenty hajji babies into a bucket?”

“Ray, for fuck’s sake.”

“Oh, you heard that one already? How about this: How do you make a dead hajji baby float?”

Brad raises his hands in surrender. “Fine. You want to be an asshole? I'm out.”

“Take your foot off its neck!” Ray calls after him, and Brad flips him off as he walks away.

“I like the other punchline better,” Gabe says, crossing their path at that moment carrying three water cans at once. He sets them down and rests an elbow companionably on Ray’s shoulder. “‘A bucket of camel spit and two scoops of dead hajji baby.’ Try that one next time.” 

“He hates dead hajji baby jokes,” Ray reminds him, still watching Brad stride off. “Permanently banned from the victor, remember?”

“Oh, right,” says Garza. “Maybe don't try it on him, then.” He slaps Ray on the chest and hefts his water again.

It's easier to be an asshole; it's more fun to be a clown. Brad and his big moral crisis can go suck it. Anyway, Ray knows where he stands now, and he definitely knows to keep anything he sees to himself.

*

He sees shit all the time now. He’s seen half the platoon get shot, executed, sees them slitting civilian throats, chilling with their families, wailing in agony, driving to fucking Benihana for their cousin’s birthday dinner. All of it could happen or none of it, and you could let it make you crazy so easily. Ray’s still terrified of ending up like Captain America, who’s completely losing it out here: hoarding his AKs, screaming down the comms over every half-assed vision of a potential threat he sees. 

“They shouldn’t let dogs like him in the corps at all, let alone in charge of those poor motherfuckers on his team,” Espera says. “Crazy-ass psycho psychics. What?” he says, turning to Pappy, who’s just given him a nudge, nodding almost imperceptibly at Ray. “I’m not talking about homeboy here. Person hasn’t had a vision yet that doesn’t involve his own dick, so far as I’ve heard. But when he starts jumping at shadows and crying into the radio I’ll say the same about him--it makes them all wack eventually. Quit giving me the elbow, Pappy, you know it’s true.”

“Hey, I’ve had plenty of visions that don’t involve my own dick,” Ray says. “I’m having one right now about Sixta’s dick, plowing you hard up the ass, and you are _loving_ it, too.” He throws a leg over Espera’s and starts humping him. “Comply with this grooming standard, bitch.”

Espera throws him off easily, gets him down on his back in the dirt and puts a foot on his groin. “You are one seriously oversexed little shitbag,” he tells Ray. “You need to go get in a few combat jacks while we’re on the ground, before all that backed-up jizz eats away what little there is left of your brain.”

“Too late,” says Brad, who’s just walked up. “Why are you molesting my RTO, Poke?”

“Yo, he’s molesting _me_ ,” Espera protests. “Homeboy’s desperate. Do you have a policy against masturbation on your team, or what? I wouldn't put it past you, you cold-as-ice motherfucker.”

“On the contrary,” Brad says, making eye contact with Ray. “I encourage it. Clears the brain, keeps you alert. Go jack off, Person. That's an order.”

And there’s no way, there’s no _way_ Brad can know what Ray’s thought about during his only successful combat jacks to date, but the way he's looking down at him, speculative and amused, makes him glad Espera’s boot is still covering his dick.

Ray swallows. He’s about to come back with the perfect Ray Person comeback, because he’s the fucking comeback kid, he's the king of this shit, and only a second has passed so it's not weird yet. It’s on the tip of his tongue, perfectly crude and hilarious, but as he shoves Espera’s boot off him and starts to get up, his eyes lock on Brad’s again and then it hits him, the mother of all visions. None of this wispy ghosting of potential that hovers around the edges of his sight all the time--this one detonates in his brain with a flat deafening _whop_ like a danger-close missile strike, whiting out the world.

He hears Brad’s voice as he goes down, _Ray!_ , and then Tony’s, _See, what did I just fucking tell you, dog,_ and then nothing, Hitman 2-1 over and out.

*

“I didn't see anything,” he insists. Brad’s got him sitting up on the back of the Humvee and has made him drink at least a gallon of water, and now he's staring holes into Ray like maybe he's going to get an answer by boring directly into his brain with Iceman laser-vision. “I stood up too fast and got dizzy. These fucking allergies, you know? They've been killing me lately.”

He winces slightly at the phrase _killing me lately_ as he hears it come out of his mouth, and laser-vision Brad is on it like a motherfucker.

“Did you hit your head when you went down?” he wants to know. “Walt! Go see if you can track down Bryan.”

“Walt, don't listen to him,” Ray calls out. “I'll have to cut you out of the band if you do it, buddy. I'm sorry to make you choose like this, but it's him or me, and you know you love your Ray-Ray best.”

He can see Brad relax, just perceptibly, at the way he's suddenly sounding more like himself again, and he presses the advantage. “It's no big deal,” he says, making his eyes all large and innocent, but careful not to overdo it. “Seriously. You're overreacting.”

Brad, he knows, hates any suggestion that he might be even _reacting_ to anything, let alone overreacting. “We’ll talk later,” he says, giving Ray one last x-ray glare. “I'm late for a team leader meeting. Go eat something, there’s still a few humrats left under my seat.”

He sweeps off, and Ray gives an exaggerated sigh of relief and slides down off the Humvee to lean against one of the back tires. 

Walt comes over and sits down next to him. “Hey,” he says. “Don't pass out again, okay? I don't want to get kicked out of the band.”

*

Brad pesters him about it some more, but Ray’s not giving in this time: he didn't see anything, he hasn't had _any_ visions, he has nothing to report. Finally he resorts to singing country music whenever Brad tries to bring it up, loud and off key.

Maybe it won't happen.

The frequency with which the image recurs to him suggests that it's more than probable, though. It wakes him so often that he decides giving up sleep altogether is the best option--it’s not like he was getting much anyway, and he's got plenty of Ripped Fuel left. He uses the extra time to review his options and the probable consequences of each.

1) he doesn't tell anyone, they all die  
2) he tells Brad, they all die anyway  
3) he tells Brad, they don't die, but Brad reports it up the chain of command and Ray gets to live out the rest of his life as a lab rat in a cage somewhere  
4) he tells Brad, they don't die, Brad doesn't report it, Brad has an aneurysm caused by forcing himself to subvert his own moral code and/or resents Ray forever

None of these options, he can't help noticing, end with oral sex; it's pretty much either death or endless torture. Maybe he'll come up with a fifth option.

Maybe it won't happen?

“You’re not sleeping,” Brad accuses him. “Your reaction times are off, you look like shit--you're falling apart out here. I need you combat-ready. What's going on?”

“Allergies,” Ray says stubbornly, and this time Brad frog-marches him over to find Bryan.

Bryan, predictably, gives them both a look like he can't believe they’re bothering him with this petty shit, but he gives Ray a bunch of antihistamines and--bonus--some legit uppers to counteract the drowsiness. “Don't just take the uppers,” he warns. “You’ll go through the roof. I wouldn't give them to you if you weren't driving. How are the visions lately?”

“Why do you ask?” Ray says, shifty out of habit even though Brad’s gone back to their own victor. 

“They intensify under stress,” Bryan explains, sounding almost patient now, for him. “Didn't they give you some fucking pamphlets to read or something, when you got tested?”

Ray shrugs. They might have; he hadn't been interested in anything but getting the fuck out of there.

“I can give you a mild sedative injection that might calm them down temporarily, let you get some sleep--” Bryan starts, and Ray’s already rolling up his sleeve. “Yeah, it’s been that bad, huh?”

“I keep having visions of Encino Man making sweet love to Casey Kasem after the war,” Ray says. “Then he makes him breakfast the next morning, wearing nothing but a frilly apron and singing Judy Garland showtunes--it's killing me, Doc, you’ve gotta help me. Hey, do you ever find anything even remotely amusing?”

“Out here? Not really.” Bryan jabs him with a needle and sticks a band-aid on him. “There. Keep that clean--or whatever passes for clean in this shithole--and tell Colbert I said to keep you off watch tonight, you're gonna be sleepy. You're good to go tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” Ray says. “Seriously. Listen, there's, uh...no actual permanent cure for being psychic, that you know of, is there?”

“It resolves on its own sometimes,” Bryan tells him. “No one really knows why.”

Now he's even got Doc looking sorry for him, which is the most pathetic thing imaginable; Bryan doesn’t break out the sympathy unless you're already dead or under six years old, and usually not even then, so it's definitely time to hightail it.

*

He sleeps for nine uninterrupted hours that night, which is unreal and frankly an embarrassment for a Recon marine on deployment. 

“Jacks and Chaffin wanted to take dick pics next to your open mouth and pour dip spit in your ear, but the sergeant read ’em the riot act,” Walt tells him. “Everyone had to practically whisper all morning, or he got real mad.”

“Sure he did,” Ray says. “He needs his RTO _combat-ready._ As if we’re ever going to see any real action out here instead of driving around in circles with our thumbs up our asses.”

The hell of it is, they actually do see some action that night, and Ray’s totally caught off guard by it. All that sleep plus prescription-strength uppers have him feeling like he’s got the good kind of superpowers, but his _actual_ superpowers have temporarily dried up and blown away, thanks to Bryan’s sedative, and it suddenly feels like he's driving blind.

He has a bad feeling about the bridge, but then they all do--it's clearly not a good tactical situation, but they're under orders, so what choice do they have? Ray leads them all down the tunnel of narrowing possibilities and into the kill zone, keyed-up but lulled by a deep underlying calm. This isn't their date with death; that's coming further down the road.

*

When it's all over he does wonder, naggingly, if he could have saved Pappy’s foot if he'd had his team on alert sooner that they were driving into an ambush. “Awesome timing with that shot you gave me,” he can't help complaining to Bryan, when the doc comes around to see how everyone’s holding up the next day. “I could’ve got us all nice and killed. Lucky the Iceman had better vision than I did last night.”

Bryan looks surprised, and then actually laughs, which is just freakishly weird, like seeing a police dog suddenly crack up. “I didn't give you shit,” he says. “There was nothing but sucrose in that syringe.”

Ray lets his mouth drop open wide in a parody of shocked-ness, but he’s actually slightly outraged. “You placeboed me?” he says. “Don't you have a Hippocratic oath against that or something, you hypocrite?”

“I’ve got an oath to keep all our asses from getting any more killed than they have to be,” Bryan says. “I'm not giving sedatives to the lead victor’s RTO. The power of suggestion is dangerous enough, especially when it comes in a needle--I probably shouldn't have even given you that, but you looked fucking wrecked. No visions since then, huh?”

Ray shakes his head, still dazed. 

“The human brain is a fucked-up thing,” Bryan philosophizes. “And psychic brains? Fucked-up times ten. Maybe you're still seeing shit and your mind just told you to ignore it, maybe you only see what you think you ought to be seeing--they're doing all kinds of studies on this out at Stanford, you should read about it. Fuck, you could take part in it, once you're out--I'll give you the name of a guy I know out there.”

“No fucking thanks,” Ray tells him. “Just hook me up with some more of that magic sugar water. Maybe it'll convince me I'm on the beach in Tahiti going down on J-Lo this time.”

*

He’s quiet for the next few days, thinking about it, still turning over what he’s going to do about the motherfucking doomsday scenario that’s gone back to running through his mind on instant replay more or less constantly again. He can feel Brad looking over at him whenever they're in the victor, trying to decide if he should say something or not, and of course, being Brad, he eventually does.

“Ray,” he says, and then turns to look into the backseat, where Reporter and Trombley are snoring away. “Hey, check it out.” Ray glances back over his shoulder. The rough road has thrown them both into the center of the seat, so that Trombley has his head on Reporter’s chest, drooling onto his body armor. They'll be horrified when they wake up.

“Aww,” Ray says. “They’re so cute at this age, aren't they, honey? Think we can carry them up to bed without waking them when we get home?”

Brad just grins at him, that stupid goddamn devastating toothpaste-ad grin of his that makes Ray want to fall over and crawl towards him on his knees, every time. Walt is up top crooning some old Hank Williams song, but the night is otherwise quiet, and Ray thinks--he almost thinks--that if it all has to end somehow, he wouldn't mind if it just happened right here and now.

“Ray,” Brad says again, dropping the grin and doing his serious-face thing (which is no less devastating, but which drops a cold sliver of alarm through Ray’s midsection). “You're the best RTO in the business. I say it all the time. Shut up, don't make any cracks, I want to say this. The psychic shit makes no difference--I still don't even buy into it half the time. Maybe it's good intuition, maybe it's self-fulfilling sometimes--”

“Yeah, it’s all in my head,” Ray can't help saying, and he can't help how bitter it comes out, either. “I've been hearing that a lot lately.”

“That's not what I'm saying. I'm just saying...I know you’re solid. But I also know you're convinced something's coming down that's got the shit scared out of you, and I think you need to tell me what it is.”

Ray looks over at him, then back at the road, and says nothing for a while. 

“Why would you want me to do that,” he comes out with finally, “if you think it's self-fulfilling bullshit or whatever?”

“Because maybe it's not,” Brad admits. “Maybe it's something preventable and I can help stop it from happening, I don't know. Mostly because...it's too much for you to carry on your own. You’re gonna break.” 

Ray frowns at that, looking away, out the driver’s side window. On the verge of breaking: is that how Brad sees him? Fucking _fragile_? Two minutes away from turning into another McGraw?

“And I’m not going to fucking report it, okay?” Brad goes on. “That’s not...I wouldn't. I know you're--”

“If,” Ray says loudly, because he needs to cut this shit off right there. “If. _If_ there were something, and I'm not saying there is…”

Brad nods, encouragingly.

“Then you’re the last person I’d take it to,” Ray finishes. 

Silence falls, punctuated only by the sounds of distant mortar shelling, and a twenty-three-year-old Virginia boy informing the Iraqi countryside in a sweet sad tenor that he's so lonesome he could die.

“Fine,” Brad says tightly. “Someone else, then. Is there someone else you can talk to about it?”

“Maybe.” Ray’s been thinking about it; he's pretty sure now. “Yeah. If there were anything to tell, that is, which--”

“All right, yeah, I get it,” Brad says, irritated now. “I'm gonna get some sleep, too, I guess,” he adds eventually. “Since it's quiet. Switch out with Trombley after another hour.” He turns his face to the window, and they don't really talk again until Baghdad.


	4. Chapter 4

The thing is this: it's not that they're going to get caught in another ambush or drive over an IED. They're not going to get captured and executed or taken out by Silkworms or SCUDs. They're not even going to be a casualty of friendly fire, which Ray could totally see happening in this clusterfuck of an invasion--it’s already almost happened at least half a dozen times by his count. 

But no. What’s going to happen is that seven of the men of Bravo 2 are going to be blown to smithereens by Bradley Fucking Colbert, do-gooder Boy Scout of the U.S. Marine Corps, trying to detonate an unexploded bomb in a Baghdad backyard so he can save a few hajji kids’ miserable little lives. The kids are going to die in the explosion too, for extra fun and irony.

How can he tell Brad that?

He can't. So he goes to the LT with it instead.

“Sir, if Sergeant Colbert were going to do something incredibly stupid,” Ray says, when he manages to track Fick down and get a private word with him. “In theory. Would you be willing to step in and put a stop to it, even if I couldn’t tell you exactly what or where or when, at this time?”

Fick’s been through a lot during this campaign, and right now he looks like the world’s grimmest and most exhausted choirboy. “Something tells me you’re not asking this for purely theoretical reasons, Corporal,” he says. “Can’t tell me, or won’t? Are any lives at risk here?”

“Not necessarily,” Ray hedges. He’s probably in over his depth here already, but he can’t exactly take it back now. “I’m not even sure this event is a true risk--I wouldn’t want to compromise my team leader’s integrity over a possibility.”

“That’s commendable of you.” Fick still looks like he’s trying to solve a puzzle. “You can’t just...tell him not to do it, though, if it’s something you’ve seen that presents a credible hazard?”

Ray waits, eyebrows raised. The LT gets this particular extra-level weary look that crosses his face, when the penny drops; it would be sort of endearing, maybe, under other circumstances.

“You don’t want him to know you’ve seen it,” Fick states. “Because of...right. Of course. I have to say, though, Ray, I don’t think that’s a clear and present danger at this point. Sergeant Colbert has expressed to me nothing but the utmost regret that you were ever permitted to feel as though--”

“With respect, sir,” Ray interrupts, because he’s going to puke if he has to listen to an entire speech in Officerspeak right now; his nerves are frayed enough. Fick looks surprised, but allows it. “It’s not just that. I don’t actually want any of the company to know that I’ve been having any visions lately. Sentiment is running high against those of the, uh, psychic persuasion right now, due to a situation you may be aware of, regarding...a certain individual.”

Fick’s hand is over his eyes now. “Fucking Captain America,” he says, and then, swiping his hand down his face, “You didn’t hear me say that. Yes. Point. But off the record, Ray? That’s a special case. No one associates that situation with you.”

Ray’s probably used up his quota of _with respect, sir_ for this conversation, or he’d politely tell the LT he’s got no fucking clue what he’s talking about. He’s more in the mix than all the other asshole officers, sure, but even so, he doesn’t hear about half the shit that goes on. Redman and Kocher as much as said right in front of him that an accidental bullet in McGraw’s brain would put everyone out of his misery. Even Brad is trying to figure out a way to get him court-martialed or at least suspended from duty. Everyone is careful not to look at Ray during these conversations, and more than a few times lately, loud groups of talkers have fallen suddenly silent when he’s walked up. People have started avoiding touching him again.

And maybe they’re not wrong to. Probably they’re not. That’s the shittiest part. 

“Corporal.” The LT cuts in on his thoughts. “I'm short on time. What are you asking me to do, exactly?’’

“Just stay on the alert, I guess, for now?” Ray says. “I’ll let you know, if it looks like...yeah.”

Fick sighs. “You can’t tell me anything about where, when…”

“Baghdad,” Ray says. “It’ll be in Baghdad. That’s all I know, sir, I swear.”

*

 _At any time, we could die._ It’s McGraw’s mantra, and it’s fucking true; Ray sees it. The fighting intensifies the closer they get to Baghdad, and he sees all their deaths, and all their enemies’ deaths, and all the civilian victims’ deaths, dozens of times every day. He hasn’t let it make him a screaming psychopath out of him yet, but Poke’s right--realistically, how long can it last?

He’s still doing a pretty good job for now of being the entertainer, the loudmouth of Bravo Company, he thinks. He got Walt laughing again, after the roadblock shooting. And he can still usually make Brad shake his head and smile despite himself, most of the time, even though they’re spending more and more time sniping at each other over petty bullshit these days. He feels like he’s working triple-time at being the exact opposite of Captain America.

He’s fucking tired.

Maybe the bomb won’t be so bad, if it happens.

*

It does happen, but not exactly the way he saw it. It's freaky as fuck when you look around and realize you're in the middle of a vision coming true, like having stepped into the set of a movie you’ve seen a hundred times. The colors are less saturated, everything looks smaller, and things happen so _fucking fast_ in real life.

Also, in a vision you don't see how you're going to feel about things in the moment it actually happens, which is: calm. Relieved, almost. And there are _two_ bombs, he wasn’t sure about that part, but the first one doesn’t have their names on it, so he has plenty of time to run and track down Fick before the second one, the one that's not a dry run for death.

If he wants to.

It's a really nice day out. Brad is grinning, he's so fucking pleased with himself for having detonated the first bomb safely, and this is stupid, Ray realizes suddenly, he’s been completely fucked up over nothing this entire time. Because there’s not a choice at all. Nothing that's going to happen to him in the aftermath of this moment weighs a feather next to the possibility of a world without Brad Colbert in it (okay, fine, and Poke. And Lilley and his stupid camera, and all the other idiots standing around gawking, including the little hajji kids who are maybe going to grow up and cure cancer or win the hajji Nobel prize or whatever, for all he knows, he may be slightly psychic but he's not a goddamned soothsayer).

He feels like the motherfucking Grinch in the cartoon, watching that giant sleigh start to tip with his suddenly-too-large heart in his throat, but there's still time to stop it. No one has to die here. He actually starts to say it, and gets as far as “Brad,” and Brad turns to look at him--

And then the LT and Gunny ride up on their metaphorical white horses after all, and it's all over.

*

“Garza tipped me off,” Fick tells him quietly, after Brad’s climbed out of the hole. “I'm assuming that was the incredibly stupid thing you wanted me to watch out for?”

“He might do something stupider tomorrow,” Ray says, watching Brad pack away the det kit, all angry because he's been thwarted in his plans to be a big fucking hero. Ray knows how he feels, sort of. “But yeah. That was it. Uh, thanks. Sir.”

“Don't mention it.” Fick smiles tightly, in that buttoned-down way of his, and gives Ray a conspiratorial shoulder-squeeze, which would be all very nice and decent of him, except that Brad looks around at that moment and sees them. And from the tilt of his head, Ray wonders if he might be putting two and two together. He's a dork, but he's not a _complete_ idiot, usually.

Ray decides that he deserves to get very drunk on highly illicit black market alcohol that night.

*

He’s sort of waiting for it, and sure enough, Brad finds him that night and drags him away from the soccer field bathtub-gin-fueled revels for an enforced chat. 

“The bomb in the garden,” he says. “That was it? That’s what’s had you pissing your pants all this time?”

“Still no foreplay,” Ray sighs. “And here I thought we’d developed a real relationship, Bradley. I just feel so taken for granted sometimes, you know? I mean, I’ll put out for you, sure, but--”

“Will you shut. The fuck. Up. Why didn’t you _tell me_?”

Ray makes a face. A few faces. “I mean...what is it? Tell you or shut the fuck up? You’re really sending me mixed signals here, homes--”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ, Ray. I don’t care if you’re shitfaced, we are having this conversation right now. You were just going to let us get blown up? What goes _on_ in your head? I really want to know.”

Ray laughs. “Nah. You really don’t. Trust me.”

“ _Trust_ you. Why the fuck would I ever do that? After today?” Brad is pacing, he’s all over the place with anger, and Ray sort of wonders if he’s about to get punched here. Not that he’d mind. Brad can punch him if he wants to. He can do whatever he likes to Ray. He might feel sort of bad about it, though, when he cools down, so it’d probably be better if he didn’t.

“Stay frosty, Iceman,” Ray tells him. He doesn’t actually put air quotes around it, but he might as well have. “You’re one to talk about trust. You want to think for two seconds about why I might not want to tell you shit?”

Brad stops pacing. He stands there and stares at Ray for...well, probably not a full minute, but it feels really long, anyway. “You’re still actually afraid I’d try to get you sent off for reassessment,” he says. “Seriously. Seriously? Okay. Let’s go over this.”

“Ehh, I don’t think so.” Ray starts to walk away. “I’m done.”

Brad grabs him by the collar. “Fuck you, you’re going nowhere until I’m done talking to you.”

“I’m drunk,” Ray tries. “I’ll hurl on your boots. Really, I think I’m going to.”

“I don’t care. Listen to me, you whiskey-tango coward little fuck. I’ve told you, I don’t know how many times now, that’s not happening. I was all fucked up the one time I mentioned it, I fucking _apologized_ \--”

He wasn’t going to say one thing, he’d told himself. Brad could talk all he wanted, he’d just ride it out on the waves of his gin-buzz. But at that, he snaps.

“Oh, sure, ’cause that makes it all better. Sorry I tried to get you shipped off for extended psychological torture, buddy, my bad, won’t happen again! You know if the LT didn’t have his head on straight, it would have actually worked? How do you have the balls to try to apologize to me for that?”

Because he still feels kicked hard in the guts, every time he thinks about the fact that Brad was willing to do that to him, even for five stupid minutes when he was off on a crazy guilt trip. And he’s fucking in love with the big jerk, and Brad doesn’t actually know shit, he has no real clue what he almost did, but still, still, still.

“So you thought you’d pay me back by letting me blow us both up,” Brad says, sounding scary-calm now. “And Poke, and those kids, and half the team. That’s right, huh? That’s what was going on today?”

 _“No,”_ Ray says, and then “ _Fuck_ no, Brad, it wasn’t like that,” but it’s kind of hard to breathe and he wonders if he actually might puke in a minute, because...is Brad entirely wrong, really? 

You can’t win a moral outrage-off with Colbert. It just can’t be done, he should have known better than to try, and he _is_ a coward, basically, that’s what it all boils down to. He feels sick and he wants to sleep, preferably forever.

“Yeah, maybe it was kind of like that,” he says, looking straight up at Brad now. “Maybe kind of exactly like that. You’re right. You win, I suck, but it’s over and we’re all going home soon, thank _fucking_ god, so are we through here?” He’s still holding his half-empty bottle of rotgut, and he takes a defiant swig of it and starts to walk away again.

“Ray,” Brad says, sounding really tired now. He doesn’t grab him this time, but he walks after him, catches up to him easily and takes the bottle of gin out of his hand. He’s giving Ray this intense, complicated stare, and it’s hard to look at, so Ray shuts his eyes, which makes him sway a little on his feet. Brad catches him by the elbow, steadying him. “You’re fucked up,” he observes. “Ray…”

Ray waits, eyes still closed, but Brad just sighs. “Don’t drink any more of this shit tonight,” he says. “You’ve got to drive tomorrow,” and Ray stands there and listens to the sound of Brad’s retreating footsteps on the turf until he can’t hear them anymore.

*

The deployment is basically over now. He should be feeling pretty good, Ray thinks. No one died--no one from Bravo, anyway--and now that they're out of the combat zone the visions have gone back down to occasional harmless flashes, with nothing huge hanging over him anymore. He can sleep again; it's awesome. Kocher and Redman have been exonerated from their part in the fucked-up Captain America shitshow, so everyone’s talking about that a lot less and he doesn't have to feel like a total pariah by association. 

He’s even made up with Brad, kind of. Or at least they talked again, a day or two after they made it to the tank repair yard where they’re awaiting the news on when they’ll be shipped home again. They didn't say much--mumbled apologies, not much eye contact--but it was enough to smooth things over.

“I was overly harsh in my accusations to you,” Brad said, formally, as if his mom had told him he had to. “I spoke to the LT about it. He made me see that you were in a difficult spot.” 

“I should have warned you about the bomb when I first saw it, though.” Ray squinted off at the horizon, not really wanting to think about Brad discussing him with Fick. “It was fucked up.”

“That it was,” Brad agreed, but then his mouth lifted in a half-grin. “Turned out all right, though. No harm done.” He gave Ray a slight shove. “Hey. Lighten up, Tiresias. We made it, right? It's over, we’re out of here soon.”

That was at least a week ago, and Ray has failed at lightening up. He misses driving, he misses singing stupid eighties songs and being obnoxious, he misses the adrenaline rush--they all do, he's not special or anything, but it just low-key sucks and feels flat. 

Sometimes he thinks (there’s way too much time to think now) that the whole point of his having visions was for him to save Brad Colbert’s amazing life, that he was just a tool of the gods to that end all along. And if that’s the case, probably that one flash of them having sex was a trick to make him fall for Brad so that he’d go along with it and feel all invested and shit. The gods are cruel bastards like that, in all the myths he’s read. If he's Tiresias, Brad is probably Odysseus, he thinks, off to bigger and shinier adventures now, while Ray’s left to skulk around the underworld.

*

The football game was a bad idea, in retrospect. 

He’s not thinking about Rudy at all when he launches himself at him. He's thinking about Brad--when is he not thinking about Brad, fuck--and the way the big jerk still doesn't get it (‘Where the fuck did you go,’ duh, as if he's been anywhere but right there, _waiting_ ).

And about the way Fick got to take credit for rescuing them all from Brad’s stupid bomb, and the way everyone jokes relentlessly about psychic shit because it's so fucking funny, and Ray has to go along with it as if it’s not the worst thing that's ever happened to him, and, and, and. It's not Rudy, Rudy just happens to be the guy who has him in a thigh-hold punching him in the head like a 185-pound metaphor for everything that sucks in Ray’s life. He doesn't even know what he’s shouting, except that it's probably going to haunt him later.

Brad is actually the last person in the world he’d want there when he’s coming off the field, totally humiliated and fucking _crying_ a little--hardly at all, Jesus, but still--so of course, obviously, there he is. At least he has the sense to keep his distance.

*

Scratch that. Brad has no sense whatsoever, Ray decides ten minutes later, when the storage room where he’s hiding out is suddenly infiltrated. Brad drops down on the floor next to Ray without comment, both of them sitting with their backs to the wall, and hands him a bottle of water.

Ray grabs it off him and drains it, then tosses the empty into a corner of the room. Brad will probably pick it up and find someplace to fucking recycle it later on, the asshole.

“I think Rudy’s going to commit some kind of ritual Eastern-style suicide if you don't accept his apology,” Brad says after a while. “He says he just completely lost it, he doesn't know why, and now he's very concerned that his chi is unaligned with his chakras or some such shit.”

Ray half laughs at that. “Rudy,” he says. “God. He lost it because I attacked him for no reason, the gigantic fruit.”

“Tensions running high all around, I guess. I heard about Patterson and Encino Man, too--did you see it?”

“Yeah. It was fucking beautiful.”

Brad gives a pained-sounding sigh. “I wish I'd been there.” 

They’re both quiet after that for so long that it’s about to get weird. Ray would have come up with something funny and/or disgusting to break the silence, not long ago, but he’s all out now; he just doesn’t care that he’s not good company. He waits for Brad to get up and make excuses about somewhere he has to be.

“Hey,” Brad says instead, banging his boot against Ray’s. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. I was going over some stuff with Nate this morning, about the demobilization protocols--you know, PDHAs and all the other shit we’ve got to do right after they ship us back.”

“Yeah?” Ray says without interest, thinking: _‘Nate’?_

“So there’s this mandatory post-combat evaluation for psychics--did you know about that?”

“Oh. Yeah, they made me do that after Afghanistan. No big.”

“It kind of sounds like they’re making it into more of a thing now,” Brad says, and Ray really hates the way he’s sounding all careful at him. “There’s been a high percentage of psychics coming back with mental health issues, I guess, and--”

“Oh, fuck,” Ray says, and laughs quietly, shaking his head. “You think I’m crazy. You and the LT.” Probably he was crazy--attacking Rudy like that, he’d just made it official. Nice going, Person.

“No! Ray, no. That’s not...no. I told you, it’s mandatory, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of it, that’s all. And I have to fill out a report on your performance in advance, so I thought we should probably discuss what it’s going to say.”

“Oh, _fuck,_ ” Ray says, in a totally different tone of voice. 

“It’s gonna say whatever you want it to say,” Brad promises. Ray risks a glance over at him, and has to scowl back down at the floor again right away; Brad is doing that steady blue-eyed soulful gaze thing, and it’s like looking into the sun.

“Tomorrow, oh-nine hundred, we can work on it, okay?” Brad says, and Ray just nods. “You’re spooking me out being so quiet, Person, I’ve got to say. I miss telling you to shut up.”

So go talk to _Nate,_ Ray thinks, but at least he’s smart enough not to say it.

“You all right in there?” Brad pushes himself up away from the wall and then crouches down right in front of him, looking searchingly into his face. “Hey. Rudy didn’t get you too bad, did he?” He cups Ray’s chin in one hand, tilting it up toward the light, and presses carefully on one of the inflamed-feeling spots on his cheekbone. 

Ray is torn between wanting to flinch away and needing to lean deeper into the touch, because having Brad’s hands on his face feels _really fucking good_ , which is so stupidly pathetic--

There’s a flash, then, stronger and clearer than anything he’s felt in weeks. A lot of mixed-up images superimposed on each other, just like the first time they met, only this one’s got...mainly a lot of kissing in it.

According to this vision, Brad’s main post-combat activity is going to be ravishing the fuck out of his RTO: kissing him hard up against a dirty concrete wall somewhere, lying down beneath him on a sofa, sitting on a kitchen table with his legs wrapped around Ray pulling him in closer, in bed, in another bed, at the fucking movies trying to be quiet with their hands all over each other because they can’t get enough, can’t stop--

“Jesus Christ, Ray.” Brad’s looking seriously concerned now. “Is your face broken, or did you just see something?”

“Saw something,” Ray says, when he can get his lungs to work again; his heart’s about to beat out of his goddamn chest. Brad can probably hear it, maybe even see it pushing out his t-shirt like he’s a heart-eyed cartoon character in ridiculous cartoon love.

“What did you see? Fuck, Ray, that was a bad one, I can tell-- _what_?”

“I can’t,” Ray says, feeling his face flame. “Oh god, no, Brad, it’s not like that...just, trust me this time--fuck, of course you don’t trust me, why should you, but I can’t tell you this one, please don’t make me.”

“I can’t _make_ you do shit,” Brad says, looking a little less worried now, getting to his feet. “I think that’s pretty well-established at this point. But it’s not because...I won’t take it to the LT or anything if you don’t want me to, you do know that by now, right?”

“It’s not that.” Ray stands up, too, feeling weak-kneed and slightly hysterical at the thought of taking _this_ to the LT. He’s got to get out of here, or his face actually is going to break with how much he wants to grin. “It’s...good.”

“You had a vision about something _good_?” Brad gets between him and the door. “Well, fuck me. You’re not leaving this room until I hear more about that. Spill it, Person. Was it x-rated? Don’t tell me you’re going to actually get with J-Lo. Or--oh my God. Rolling Stone’s girlfriend?”

“That skank?” Ray shoves at him, but it’s like trying to move a tank. “Get away from the door, I’m not telling you shit--go rifle through the LT’s snivel gear if you need something to jerk off over, I hear it’s crammed full of women’s underwear.”

“And he’s back.” Brad steps aside from the door to let him pass, looking happier than a lit-up Christmas tree--or a lit-up menorah, Ray guesses, if those are happy, he’s not even sure. Either way, he’s smiling like Ray talking trash at him is literally the best thing he’s ever heard, and Ray wants him so bad he can't bear it; he’s still sporting a semi from the stuff that went on in that vision, and he’s going to have to brush against Brad to get past him out of the storage space, so that’s about to be awkward. He hesitates.

The dirty concrete block Brad’s leaned back against is awfully familiar-looking, suddenly, and Brad’s looking at him different now, less delighted and amused and more uncertain and...hopeful?

 _Oh,_ Ray realizes. He really is an asshole sometimes. He’s the one who’s known all along that something has the potential to take place between them. It’s kind of up to him whether he’s going to make stuff happen or keep it from happening.

Maybe the visions don’t entirely suck after all, he thinks, as he pushes Brad hard up against the wall and leans in. 

It's not a long deep passionate kiss, exactly, more of the tentative kiss you might expect from two terrified and dirty combat-weary Marines holed up in a storage shed where someone could walk in on them at any second. Brad’s mouth is warm and soft and dry against his, and that's about all Ray has time to notice before it's over.

“Ray,” Brad says slowly. “What the fuck was that?” 

His stomach drops down into his boots. He's got it wrong after all--the visions are fucked, and now--

Now Brad’s kissing him again, leaning down and cupping Ray’s face in his hands, shifting them around so they're up against the door, which means at least no one can crash right in.

“Is this--” Brad asks, but he has to stop and kiss Ray again before he can finish the thought, which is so hot he can hardly stand it. “Is this what you saw just now?”

“And some other stuff,” Ray gasps out.

Brad pulls back enough to stare down at him--looming, he's fucking _looming_ over Ray now, looking hungry. “What other stuff?” he demands. “What else are you holding out on me?”

“I-- I mean, there’s kind of a lot,” Ray stammers. “You want the names of every specific act, or…?”

Brad makes a sort of despairing sound and dives down onto him again. He’s got his hands up Ray’s shirt now, which is making Ray lose the ability to think in words, and he’s starting to wonder if he actually did go crazy, or if maybe Rudy killed him and this is the afterlife. (Fuck, he must have done a few things right if that’s the case.)

“We should stop,” Ray manages, a few kisses later. “We can’t, not here, Jesus, Brad.”

“Fuck that.” Brad is pressed all the way up against him, he’s _shaking_ and they’re both hard and Ray has definitely, definitely lost his mind. “I’ve wanted you since Afghanistan, I’m not waiting any more--you didn’t _know?_ What kind of a useless psychic are you?” He’s working open Ray’s belt now, he’s--oh, fuck, this is actually happening--

“A fucking awesome one, homes,” Ray says, as Brad slides down onto his knees. “Best in the business."


End file.
